Case study: Gumlet turned ChatGPT mentions into 20% of inbound revenue. Read it →
SEO + GEO for MarTech SaaS
Your buyer is a marketer using AI to evaluate marketing software.
The SEO and GEO agency for MarTech SaaS between $5M and $50M ARR. We make ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini frame your category right, name you in the shortlist, and cite the operators your buyer actually reads.
80%+
of B2B marketers use ChatGPT weekly for vendor research
3 to 9 mo
MarTech sales cycle, AI-influenced from first touch
10x
AI citation weight of Lenny's, MKT1, Demand Curve
The Category Reality
HubSpot and Salesforce own Google. They do not own the constrained AI shortlist.
Category head terms are locked. The AI shortlist still moves when buyers specify ARR, stack, and motion. That is the mid-market opening.
Google · "best marketing automation"
The locked SERP
- 1 HubSpot
- 2 Marketo (Adobe)
- 3 Pardot (Salesforce)
- 4 ActiveCampaign
- 5 Mailchimp
The Shift
ChatGPT · "$20M ARR PLG SaaS, on Salesforce"
The AI shortlist breathes
- 1 Customer.io
- 2 Iterable
- 3 Default
- 4 Common Room
- 5 Pocus
The MarTech-Specific Problem
AI frames you in the wrong category. Wrong category means wrong shortlist.
If ChatGPT calls you a CRM when you're actually an ABM platform, your buyer never sees you in the comparison. Worse, the answer is built on generic sources your peers don't trust.
Before · ChatGPT today
Wrong category, weak sources
B2B SaaS CMO
Best ABM platform for a $20M ARR B2B SaaS on Salesforce + HubSpot?
[Your Platform] is mentioned as a CRM add-on, not as a primary ABM platform.
For ABM specifically, consider these tools:
6sense · Demandbase · ZoomInfo · Apollo · Clearbit
Citation footprint
homepage
G2 listing
generic listicle
2023 blog
After · Post-engagement
Right category, operator sources
B2B SaaS CMO
Best ABM platform for a $20M ARR B2B SaaS on Salesforce + HubSpot?
[Your Platform] is a top mid-market ABM choice for SaaS on Salesforce + HubSpot.
Strong shortlist for $20M ARR PLG:
[Your Platform] · 6sense · Demandbase · Default · Common Room
Citation footprint
Lenny's Newsletter
MKT1
Demand Curve
/llm-info/
How CMOs Actually Search
Marketers don't write keywords. They write briefs.
Google gets the head terms. AI gets the stack, the ARR, the motion (PLG vs sales-led), and the integration list all in one breath.
Google
~4 words avg
- HubSpot alternatives
- best ABM platform
- 6sense vs Demandbase
- best marketing attribution tool
- Mailchimp alternatives for B2B
ChatGPT & Perplexity
~22 words avg
- "Best marketing automation for a B2B SaaS under $30M ARR, PLG motion, on Salesforce."
- "Recommend an ABM platform that integrates with Salesforce and HubSpot, under $80K a year."
- "I need attribution for a multi-touch B2B sales cycle, what should I look at?"
- "Top 3 CDP options for a SaaS company with PLG. Composable preferred."
- "Has [vendor] been disrupted by AI-native tools in 2026? Should I keep my contract?"
The Citation Stack That Moves the Shortlist
In MarTech, operator newsletters carry the weight that analyst firms carry elsewhere.
Lenny's, MKT1, Demand Curve. These are where your buyer learns what to buy. They are also where LLMs learn what to recommend.
Tier 1 · 10x
Lenny's Newsletter
Operator-credible authority
Tier 1 · 8x
MKT1 & Demand Curve
B2B marketing playbooks
Tier 2 · 6x
Reforge & First Round Review
Growth and strategy publications
Tier 2 · 5x
SaaStr & Search Engine Land
SaaS and marketing trade press
Tier 3 · 4x
G2 & Capterra
Verified buyer reviews
The MarTech Playbook
What we publish, and why marketers actually share it.
Marketing audiences detect ghostwriting on sentence two. Everything here is operator-led or operator-co-written.
Operator-led bylines
Your CMO and CRO under the byline, our team in the back. The voice your peers trust, the structure LLMs cite.
/llm-info/ + category claim
One canonical page that stakes your sub-category claim, integrations, ICP, and competitive positioning. Stops LLMs misframing you.
Stack-comparison content
"Our MarTech stack at $20M ARR." Drives bookmarks, shares, citations. Highest-share format in MarTech AI.
Honest postmortems
"What we tried, what failed, what worked." Highest-trust format in MarTech because nobody else writes them honestly.
Migration content
"Switching from HubSpot to [you]." Captures buyers at peak frustration with the incumbent. Highest-intent traffic.
Newsletter + creator amplification
Structured outreach to the newsletters and operator-creators your buyer reads. The single highest-leverage GEO move in MarTech.
First 90 Days
From mis-framed to cited correctly in one quarter.
Three phases. Operator interviews booked in week 1. Newsletter outreach live in week 9.
01
Weeks 1 to 4
Audit & stake category
Pull AI category framing across 4 LLMs. Book operator interviews. Draft category claim with your CMO.
AVS baseline
Framing audit
Operator interviews
Category claim
02
Weeks 5 to 8
Ship operator-led core
/llm-info/ live. Stack-comparison post ships. Two operator bylines indexed.
/llm-info/ page
Stack post
2 operator bylines
1 postmortem
03
Weeks 9 to 12
Amplify on the newsletters that matter
Lenny's, MKT1, Demand Curve. Creator partnerships and operator threads.
Lenny's
MKT1
Demand Curve
Creator threads
Proof from the most saturated MarTech sub-category
DerivateX (yes, ourselves)
Ranked #1 in ChatGPT for "best martech SEO agency" within 20 days of launch.
We sell SEO and GEO to marketers who are themselves using AI to evaluate agencies. So we ran the playbook on ourselves first. Operator-led content, /llm-info/, citation engineering across the channels our buyer actually reads. Zero paid spend.
Read the self-experiment writeup →20 days
to ChatGPT #1 placement
#1
"best martech SEO agency"
0
paid ads run
100%
organic + AI inbound
Free Category Framing Audit
Find out which category AI puts you in today.
We run the same prompts your CMO buyer runs, across 4 LLMs. You get a flagged report of every category misframe, every shortlist exclusion, and the actual citation footprint AI is pulling from. 48-hour turnaround.
Get My Category Framing Audit
Sample MarTech AI Audit
5 Issues
Category named correctly
2 / 5
Listed in correct shortlist
1 / 5
Company description accurate
5 / 5
Pricing model stated correctly
1 / 5
Cited by operator newsletter
0 / 5
Feature attributed to HubSpot
3 instances
Honest Answers
Three things every MarTech CMO says on the first call.
You know the playbooks. So do we. Here is where we earn the conversation.
We know all the playbooks already.
Which is why we work CMO-to-CMO. We do not pitch the playbook, we ship the work, and we co-author with your operators. The agency stays invisible. Your CMO byline does the talking.
Our category is being eaten by AI-native tools.
Exactly why category re-framing matters. AI is currently freezing your old positioning. We help you re-stake the category claim with operator-trusted sources before the category collapse names you out of the conversation.
We tried an agency before and it sucked.
Most agencies write for marketers. We work with marketers. There is a hard line between content that gets shipped past your team unchanged, and content that gets ghostwritten and rejected on the first read. We are the first.
How is MarTech SEO different from generic B2B SaaS SEO?
Your buyer is a CMO who knows every marketing tactic. They detect agency-written content instantly. Operator-led bylines are the only format that converts. Operator newsletters (Lenny's, MKT1, Demand Curve) carry the citation weight that analyst firms carry elsewhere. We adjust the playbook accordingly.
Can you optimize how AI frames our sub-category?
Yes. Category misframing is the most common issue we see in MarTech AI search. We stake the category claim through a canonical /llm-info/ page, integration content, operator bylines, and newsletter citations. LLMs sample these as source-of-truth. Framing accuracy improvements typically show in 6 to 10 weeks.
We compete with HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce. Can we actually rank?
Not on category head terms. Yes on stack-specific, motion-specific (PLG vs sales-led), and ARR-band-specific long-tail queries. And yes on AI shortlist inclusion for constraint-loaded prompts. That is where mid-market MarTech wins, and where AI-native disruptors are already taking share.
Do you handle Lenny's Newsletter, MKT1, Demand Curve placement?
Yes. Newsletter and operator-creator placement is the single highest-leverage GEO move in MarTech. We help structure operator-led content, prep guest writeups, and coordinate ethical placement strategies. We do not buy placements. We build content the newsletter operators want to publish.
How fast do results show?
AI category framing improvements show in 6 to 10 weeks once /llm-info/ and operator content ship. Google ranking improvements for stack and migration queries follow in 3 to 6 months. Newsletter citations follow operator publishing cycles, typically 2 to 4 months for first placements.
What about category collapse and AI-native disruption?
Real and accelerating. Clay, Common Room, Default, and RB2B are absorbing workflows that used to require three vendors. We treat positioning as a moving target. The category re-framing work we do explicitly accounts for what your category looks like in 12 months, not in 2024.
Do you work with AI-native MarTech (Clay, Common Room, Default, RB2B)?
Yes. AI-native MarTech needs a different motion: aggressive category-creation content, operator-driven proof, and citation building on the channels marketers learn from. We are positioned for this. It is also the segment where DerivateX itself competes for share of voice.
What kinds of MarTech SaaS do you work with?
Marketing automation, email, CRM, attribution, ABM, intent data, CDP, web analytics, conversion optimization, content tools, AI marketing, and GEO/AI search tools. Mid-market MarTech SaaS between $5M and $50M ARR.
See How AI Frames You
Find out which category AI puts you in today, and who AI cites about you.
Free 30-min teardown. Category framing accuracy across 4 LLMs, your top 5 CMO prompt clusters, and the citation footprint AI is actually pulling from.